Anderson Cooper went after Rep. Michele Bachmann on Thursday night, for the false claims she has made in Congress.
Bachmann announced on Wednesday that she will not seek re-election in 2014. Cooper, it seemed, will not be sad to see her go.
"In her four terms in the House, Bachmann has certainly been a lightning rod for controversy," the CNN host said. "She's made, as Dana referenced, several memorable and frankly factually incorrect statements about everything from President Obama to the HPV vaccine. On this program, she made a claim about the pricetag on a trip the president was taking that was pure fiction."
Before turning to John King and David Gergen to discuss Bachmann's political legacy, Cooper replayed clips of interviews where he confronted her over some of those claims, as well as Bachmann racing away from Dana Bash's questioning about her claims that Obama has a dogwalker. "That was an amazing interview because she was the one who brought up this whole dogwalker thing and then she turned it on Dana Bash, saying, 'You're bringing up a dogwalker while four Americans died in Benghazi."
On Thursday, CNN host Anderson Coopershone the spotlight on Republicans who voted against a U.N. treaty protecting people with disabilities, highlighting lawmakers who backed away from supporting the measure in response to conservative misinformation and opposition.
Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) featured prominently in Cooper’s “Keeping Them Honest” segment. He reported that Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), formerly a co-sponsor of the motion to ratify the treaty, suddenly backed out even after meeting with former GOP Presidential candidate Bob Dole, a proponent of the measure.
The lawmakers declined an invitation to come onto the show to explain themselves, leaving Cooper to condemn their dishonesty:
COOPER: And keeping them honest, they used arguments that just frankly did not square with the facts. They weren’t true. [...] We can only guess their motivations, and frankly, some of this is just so baffling that we’d be taking wild guesses, and we just don’t want to do that.
Watch Cooper’s full segment here:
Prominent conservative groups, rallied by Rick Santorum, denounced the treaty on the false premise that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) would strip parents with disabled children of their rights. As a result of their efforts, though, the treaty failed by a mere five votes.
The Republicans who changed their votes have drawn widespread criticism from disabilities rights groups and Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised to bring the treaty up for a vote in the next session of Congress.
Last week, CNN contributor Dana Loesch claimed a State Department official has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood -- even as her CNN co-workers Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper dismissed such charges as "McCarthy-like."
On her July 19 radio show, Loesch was discussing charges initially brought by Rep. Michele Bachmann, who in June sent a series of letters to federal agencies claiming that "individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood" are influencing State Department policies. Bachmann singled out Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin -- who is also married to former Rep. Anthony Weiner -- and claimed that Abedin's family has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood; she later openly wondered how Abedin "was able to avoid being disqualified for a security clearance."
Loesch discussed Bachmann's Brotherhood infiltration theory with anti-Islam activist Brigitte Gabriel. When Gabriel said that it was "about time our government begins an investigation into the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government," Loesch agreed, saying, "Absolutely," then added:
LOESCH: Looking especially at how some of our foreign policy has been handled, Hillary Clinton essentially siding with the Muslim Brotherhood candidate in Egypt, and then it was discovered that her top aide -- Huma Abedin -- is essentially a member of the female version of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Sisterhood. All of this -- it seems enough to me to pose questions as to why our government is becoming so close with a group that has been so hostile to the United States, has fought against the United States, has sided with terrorists, and is a very oppressive regime that believes in Sharia law.
Bachmann's letters have received bipartisan condemnation -- Sen. John McCain even blasted the accusations from the floor of the Senate -- for failing to support her charges with concrete evidence. Indeed, Loesch's colleagues at CNN also criticized Bachmann's charges.
On his July 17 show, host Anderson Cooper said that Bachmann's evidence was "questionable at best." He laid out her guilt-by-association claims in a graphic and said:
COOPER: So that's how many degrees of separation Bachmann's claim is based on. Huma Abedin's deceased father, who started an organization decades ago, had the support of a guy who had another organization that might have had the support of another organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. And because of that, Huma Abedin might be some sort of spy or infiltrator and deserves to be investigated.
Wolf Blitzer also dismissed Bachmann's claims, calling her charges "McCarthy-like" on the July 19 broadcast of his show. After a heated back-and-forth with Democratic lobbyist Hilary Rosen about Bachmann and her letters, Blitzer finally said, "It's an outrageous, McCarthy-like charge, to be sure, and she does owe Huma -- who I know well -- an apology."
This is not the first time Loesch has been at odds with her CNN colleagues -- in January, a number of CNN journalists criticized Loesch for praising U.S. Marines who allegedly urinated on the dead bodies of Taliban members.
CNN's Anderson Cooper came prepared Monday to an interview with a Republican Texas state representative who questions President Barack Obama's citizenship.
Rep. Leo Berman(R-racist right wing dickhead) has introduced a billthat would require any candidate for president or vice president of the United States to provide his or her birth certificate to the Texas secretary of state.
"This bill is necessary because we have a president whom the American people don't know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place," Leo Berman, who has represented the 6th District of Texas since 1999, told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
"I don't know anything about President Obama," Berman told Cooper Monday.
"There's a certificate of live birth, which is what the state of Hawaii sends out," Cooper explained. "Why isn't that good enough?
"Well, because it's not an original birth certificate. It doesn't show the parents' place of birth. And, also, we know for certain that President Obama's father was born in Kenya. Since he was born in Kenya, in -- that was a British protectorate. President Obama was born in 1961. And with his father being a British citizen, at least, President Obama, we think, holds dual citizenship," Berman replied.
"Well, actually, technically that's not correct," Cooper said. "He may have been born with duel citizenship because of the technicality of his father being under the British -- a British subject, being from Kenya, but he automatically lost that in -- at the age of 23."
"And the Hawaii state health director has acknowledged that, back in 2008, she has -- and I quote -- 'personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Senator Obama's original birth certificate -- certificate on record, in accordance with state policies and procedures,'" Cooper continued.
"The governor of Hawaii, who is a Republican, was quoted as saying: 'I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records at the Department of Health. We issued a news release at the time saying the president was, in fact, born at Kapi'olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that is just a fact,'" he explained.
"Well, my question to you, then, Anderson, is, why -- did you see it? I would like to see it," Berman said.
"You can go and see it. The nonpartisan fact-checking organization FactCheck.org, they -- they looked at it. It has a raised seal. They say it's legit," Cooper noted.
In August 2008, FactCheck.org confirmed that it had examined and verified Obama's birth certificate.
Then Cooper wanted to know if Berman had applied the same test to Republican presidents.
"[H]ave you seen George W. Bush's transcripts from college?" Cooper asked.
"I could see anything I want from George W. Bush," Berman replied.
"Actually, sir, you couldn't... President Bush refused to release that information from Andover and from his time at Yale," Cooper said.
Ignoring that question, Berman repeated a debunked internet rumor that Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981 during a ban on US citizens traveling there. "Where are the president's passports and his travel records which got him to Pakistan in the early '90s, when no U.S. citizen could get to Pakistan at all?"
"I respect you," Cooper interrupted. "And I respect, certainly, your service to this country, but where do you get your information? Because that -- that -- what you have just said is factually incorrect."
"Sir, he traveled to Pakistan in 1981, and -- when he was a student. And -- and, actually, Americans could travel to Pakistan then," Cooper added.
"In fact, I -- we have an article from The New York Times from 1981 from the travel section about the joys of traveling in Pakistan. You needed a -- American citizens, I think they needed a 30-day visa, but American citizens could go and travel in Pakistan. That's just an Internet rumor that you're spreading," he said.
"Sir, just, of the points you -- of the points you have raised, the factual points to -- I mean, you're basing legislation on stuff that's basically just rumors and stuff that's been proven to be false," Cooper noted.
Cooper has been praised for his calm and competent handling of Berman.
"Watching, it’s clear just how often exchanges like this don’t happen on cable television, which given it’s 24 hour cycle would suggest a luxury of time," wrote Mediaite's Mark Joyella "And beyond that, Cooper’s preparations–so clearly his own and not fed by earpiece–prove he’s somebody who sets himself apart from talking point parrots who populate most other shows on cable."
"This is a journalist doing his job, and doing it very, very well," he concluded.
For their part, birthers have resurged in the past few weeks. Berman filed his bill requiring presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate.
Former Republican Congressman John LeBoutillier released a fictional book that he says uses "real things" like Obama's grandmother once claimed she was present for his Kenyan birth.
Last week, Lou Dobbs, who has defended birthers in the past, announced he would be hosting a show on Fox Business News.
On Monday, the Supreme Court Justices rejected a lawsuit that claimed Obama was not a US citizen because his father was a citizen of the British crown.
This video is from CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, broadcast Nov. 29, 2010.
